Dear Diary,

Lindsey's birthday camping trip has me thinking about Equity. Because at the end of the day I think that's a huge important part of treating people fairly, and as duBois said, it's the job of Heroes to make things fair. If I can't do that for my own fuckin' kids, I'm not sure I can do it for anybody, really.

Maze's birthday was a single day trip to Grandmother's Village, where everybody played in the river. I didn't plan for her to bring a pet back, but I guess in lieu of a Cat Distribution System, here and now has a Dragon Distribution System. Or maybe a Pet Distribution System? I sure as hell didn't set out to get her a pet Dragon, nor did I ever intend for Menace to have a viper bigger than most anacondas, and I definitely didn't intend for the girls to each have their very own Nightmare, let alone Ria having a spare. But Maze's birthday was basically done at the end of that day. Mostly. I guess Baby didn't get delivered home until the next day, but that's still not really two days of celebration.

Lindsey wound up getting like a day and a half, because our hike out to the camping spot wound up taking until dusk, and even if Alex's surprising survival knowledge set us up with a much nicer camp site than I'd expected, we still wound up spending most of the afternoon and evening getting there and setting up the site. The girls all stayed up late, or at least latish, both making and eating dinner, followed by just kinda noodling around figuring out who was gonna sleep with who. Meaning which adults and which kids went in which tents, not Lachlan and Lily's nocturnal adventures later.

So yesterday the kids spent all day playing around the campsite, in the stream, in the woods. I figured if something really nasty wandered around Lily or Marie would sniff it out before it got to the kids, especially the littler ones who stayed close to Marie. Okay, all but Menace, but I still say anyone and anything coming up against Menace that doesn't play nice or run screaming is so stupid it probably deserves the kid treatment. As in 'done unto like Menace did unto the baby goat'. Then again, she might or might not have eaten an adult goat by this point. I honestly don't know. Seriously. But what I do know is that anything herd animal stupid enough to try to do something to my cutest Chupacabra deserves whatever the fuck happens to it.

Breakfast and lunch wound up being jerky Marie brought along. By mid afternoon the kids collected enough fish to start dinner, although with the novelty of fishing wearing off for most of them, I wound up glad we'd brought along some cuts of bear meat as well. We roasted more potatoes, and I got the bright idea of fileting some of the fish and sliding slices of fish meat into the potatoes while they baked. I'm not sure how well it came out, because I only got like two bites. The kids seemed to like it though.

While Marie and Lily watched over the cook fire along with about half of the kids, Lachlan and I helped Alex, Lindsey, and the other half make some 'improvements' to the camp site. Some of it was really simple stuff, like collecting some bigger branches and sort of weaving a wind break across the two big trees they'd set the tents up between. Alex did some work in the lower branches of the tree, setting some logs into what looked like stable spots, hooking some of the supporting ropes through them. Lindsey wound up searching out half a dozen saplings, like real little ones, and bringing them back to plant them in the lee of the wind break.

Lily, of all people, looked on approvingly as she did. Not sure what was up with that, but given that Lindsey seemed to be setting up the kind of thing we'd originally met Closer, Panther, and Silk in, I guess she didn't have nearly as much problem with wilderness maintenance as some of the tree hugger types I'd known back in the day. I guess as a local she'd know what kind of shit fell under 'likely to fuck up the environment' and which stuff fell under 'tweaking the ecosystem without hurting it'.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Of course, by nightfall we'd kind of lost Alex, Lindsey, Ria, and Menace up the tree. Turned out Alex had managed to put together a little platform up there, entirely out of hunks of wood, tent support cords, and I think a section of cloth. Maybe some wooden pegs Lindsey had carved with her big buck knife, I'm not sure. All I'm certain of is that the three of them all refused to come down until I called up that dinner was ready. At which point I had to go help Lindsey and Alex down.

Wasn't quite sure what to think of Menace coming down the tree like a fuckin' squirrel, either. Just straight up running down the side on all fours. I mean, nearly gave me a heart attack when I saw her coming down, and I jumped over to catch her before she slammed into the ground, but she stopped like ten feet up, saw me standing there in the light of the campfire, and leapt down into my arms hollering, "catch me, Mama!"

Then Ria did the same thing. Well, almost. Shit, if she'd done that after Isnomi, it might have been less scary than what she did, which was jump down from branch to branch. I'm not sure, but it almost seemed like she was gliding a little bit, like she didn't fall as fast as she should. Still whomped into me but good when she hit the bottom, though.

After dinner we all settled in again. I kinda figured Lily and Lachlan would sneak out again, but before they could, Marie snuck over to my tent and, one finger against her lips, pulled me out of the tent and led me up the tree to that little proto tree fort the girls had put together. I didn't really think she was gonna do anything but sit there with me, but she disabused me of that pretty quick. Also, a platform barely big enough for four girls to sit on was not nearly big enough for me to stretch out on comfortably, let alone Marie, so... standing. Which I was gonna object to, except Marie whispered, "For Siobhan." At which point I shut up and did my best to get into it.

She delivered me back to the tent some time after midnight, at which point Lachlan snuck out. Don't think he and Lily went up the tree, though. Hell, not even sure he spent the time with Lily. Maybe he and Marie went and re-enacted their post-Dire-Bear shenanigans, I dunno. Much like myself, my Murder Mittens, she a lusty wench. Of course, by the time Lachlan got back that had me worrying about stuff I'd been told about pregnant women getting really randy shortly before the baby arrived, and I seriously wondered if I'd need to call in reinforcements at that point.

This is my life; camping with a dozen single digit kids, being amused by my fellow himbo getting with a local forest spirit, and worrying about whether I'll be able to properly satisfy my tigress wife's prenatal nookie cravings.

Could be worse, I guess.

Okay, I know it could be worse. Got home after lunchtime to find Siobhan still miserable. After the girls all took turns bringing her bits and bites of jerky and camp food, I Co-Located to lead them down to the stables to take care of their Nightmares and Baby. Turns out Mister Slither had taken to sleeping curled around our bed, which made me feel a lot less worried about Siobhan's safety when I couldn't be around to watch over her. A hundred foot of sapient viper is one hell of a bodyguard.

Found out what Marie meant when, after the kids were gone, she touched Saffron's cheek, said, "Relay, Please?" and settled down while my Kitten apparently fed Siobhan the replay of our treetop antics the night before. I worried about her feeling some kinda way, but as Saffron relayed the memory in full surround sensorium, Siobhan's eyes slipped closed and she smiled.

When the memory finished, she just quietly whispered, "Thank you, dear Marie," before drifting off to sleep.

"How's she doing?" I whispered.

Saffron shrugged, then shook her head. "There's nothing wrong, per se. The baby is healthy. She's not... she's less unhealthy now than when she first joined us, although that's not saying a great deal. She's getting enough concentrated nutrition from the bear jerky and the hard tack that she's not malnourished, and your modified Stabilize will, if we need to, give her the energy to make up for the bulk she's not getting. But..."

"She's Miserable."

Marie's statement pretty much covered it. So we all just snuggled in around our poor Sister and made her as comfortable as we could.

Because sometimes that's all you can do.

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